


confidant

by wanderinghooves



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt Some Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Medical Inaccuracies, Mental Instability, Mild Gore, Missing Scenes, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, hawkeye is mustang's rock through the worst of everything, i don't understand how autopsy reports work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24992974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderinghooves/pseuds/wanderinghooves
Summary: If Hughes was his head, Hawkeye is his heart. He knows he couldn’t bury her and survive.Mustang finds his grip faltering in the wake of Hughes's death; Hawkeye tethers him to reality.
Relationships: Maes Hughes & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 5
Kudos: 79





	confidant

**Author's Note:**

> **confidant:** someone you entrust with your most private and vulnerable matters; your closest ally.
> 
> Inspiration: Hide by Juice WRLD

The sky is dark by the time the car pulls in front of his apartment.

Hawkeye shifts the gearstick into park but leaves the car on, engine still rumbling. She hadn’t said anything during the drive back from the cemetery and makes no attempt to start now.

Mustang tilts his head forward slowly, mechanically, from where he’d pressed it hard into the back of his seat. He stares out of the windshield with a hollow expression, watching the streetlights blinking in to life in the distance of the avenue.

Their latent silence persists for a long moment until he shoves his hand up abruptly to push open the passenger door. This motion saps whatever remaining dregs of energy he might’ve possessed, and he screws his eyes shut as he lingers in the seat.

Mustang can feel Hawkeye’s gaze on him, heavy and sad. The sensation twists in his gut like a snake. He knows he has to say _something,_ if only to convince her that he’s still there with her.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

She lets out a long, slow breath, consciously measured. He can see her hand twitch in his periphery almost as if she wants to reach out and touch him, but she thinks better of it.

“Of course, sir.”

He knows she’s been trying to remain composed for his sake, but he can hear a waver seep through in her voice. It makes the numbness in his chest turn to ice. 

There’s a desperate part of himself that wants her to stay, to beg her not to leave him here alone, but years and years of practice have trained him to suppress this sort of urge.

He forces himself out of the car.

\- - - - -

Mustang is lounging on a bench in the courtyard of Central Command, killing time as he flicks through a folder of reports in his lap with an absentminded hand. He doesn’t remember the exact reason for his being here, but he knows he’s expecting someone.

It’s a beautiful day, the sun streaming clear and bright through a cloudless sky. The air is warm, and somewhere birds are singing. A handful of other officers meander through the courtyard, their conversations a quiet babble in the background.

“Hey, Roy!”

Mustang lifts his head to see Hughes before him, a classic lopsided smile plastered on his face as he seats himself at the other end of the bench.

“Sorry I’m late, meeting with the personnel office ran long. You know how it goes.”

Hughes scratches the back of his head sheepishly, and Mustang chuckles.

“Damned bureaucracy.”

“You said it.”

Mustang sets aside his stack of reports as Hughes digs in his coat pockets for something.

“What was it that you wanted to talk to me about, anyway?”

A shadow passes over Hughes’s face, and his smile slips.

As he opens his mouth to speak, the crack of a gunshot rings out.

Mustang whips around, searching for the source of the sound. The courtyard is suddenly empty; the birds have gone eerily silent. 

Something heavy collides with his shoulder.

Mustang’s head jerks around to find that Hughes has crumpled against him on the bench, his face turned a sickening white. He desperately tries to shove his friend back up into a seated position but his hands are met with something warm and wet. 

The sunlight is gone as Mustang pulls back to see a vicious red stain growing on the breast of Hughes’s jacket, his own hands slicked with blood. 

The breath is sucked from his lungs like a vacuum.

“No. _No.”_

His stomach turns to ice as Hughes’s hand suddenly shoots up to grasp at his lapels, pulling Mustang in just inches from his ghostly face. Behind the glasses, the eyes are pale and unfocused.

Blood bubbles at the corner of his mouth before spilling out into a thin stream over his chin and onto Mustang’s sleeve. When Hughes speaks, his teeth are stained red.

_“Why didn’t you save me?”_

Mustang’s hands fly to Hughes’s face, frantic. He tries to scrub the blood away from the mouth but more just keeps coming, seeping endlessly into his gloves.

“Stay with me!”

The laugh Hughes gives him is shallow and horrible, spraying a fine mist of red onto his face- and then he’s gone, vanished beneath Mustang’s grip.

_“Hughes!”_

Mustang’s standing now, his head spinning as he searches desperately for any sign of his friend, of anyone.

There’s a low rumble in the blackened clouds above Central, and it begins to rain.

\- - - - -

The office in Eastern Command is traditionally a noisy place.

Most units buzz with friendly conversation throughout the workday, and Mustang’s team is even more closely knit than those. At any given point the room might be filled with laughter as Havoc teases Fuery about a past anecdote, groans as Falman struggles with the day’s crossword, incoherent mumbling as Breda complains to Hawkeye about some due date or other.

None of that happens now.

The only sounds to be had are intermittent shufflings of files against desks, the low scratches of pens on paper. No one speaks. A shadow hangs over the room, smothering; the men dare not disturb it.

Mustang presses his palms to his temples, head bowed over his desk. There’s a folder of paperwork in front of him but he’s barely even managed to register it- his head feels like he’s swimming against a ferocious current.

Seeing the phone at his desk when he’d come in had made him sick, and he’s surreptitiously barricaded himself from it with a pile of books. The damage, however, has already been done, and the weight of the device’s presence sends cold needles through his guts. 

He could’ve been faster. He _should’ve_ been faster.

Mustang stares into the polished wood and tries to focus on breathing evenly.

He flinches as movement stirs in his periphery but when he raises his head it’s just Hawkeye, lingering silently at the edge of his desk. Her expression is carefully unreadable; he knows she’s determined to be strong in his stead.

With a deft motion, she extends a hand to retrieve the paperwork from before him. Her sleeve grazes against Mustang’s arm as she does this and somehow the small contact grounds him to reality, the haze over his brain temporarily thinned. 

She says nothing as she returns to her desk and adds his paperwork to her own.

\- - - - -

Days pass and it is Hawkeye that keeps him functional.

There’s no discussion, no formal agreement between them, but he knows she’s going out of her way on his behalf. She drives him to work every morning and back home at the end of the day. She makes sure that he is never left alone while at work, skipping her own breaks to sit with him in the office if the rest of the men are out, escorting him to the bathroom. She keeps doing the bulk of his paperwork even after he’s able to start actively working again. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind Mustang feels guilty for leaning on her this much, for offloading the fallout of his grief onto her shoulders, but more than anything he is incredibly grateful. She’s his biggest constant, his one companion even older than Hughes, and it is this familiarity that he clings to.

He still can’t bring himself to eat in the cafeteria; the space is too crowded, the noise too great. Hawkeye seems to understand this automatically and instead resorts to bringing food to the office for both of them, two meals packed and ready in her desk each morning. When the rest of the unit disperses for lunch she slides her chair over to the side of his desk and they eat together, quiet and intimate. 

She never finishes her own meal before she sees that his is gone.

\- - - - -

It’s nine days after his return to Eastern Command when Hughes’s autopsy report is released.

He’d almost started to feel like he can function with some illusion of normalcy again; the previous night was the first time he had managed to sleep for five hours without waking, breathless, from a nightmare. Hawkeye’d even begun to allow him to travel to the bathroom and take select breaks unaccompanied.

It is during one of these new instances of freedom that Mustang finds himself walking into an empty office. The rest of the men have gone to take their mid-morning break and Hawkeye has ducked out to attend to some unspecified business. 

He lingers at the front of the room, feeling uncertain. Work has become a sort of refuge from himself, somewhere that he can suppress his thoughts in paperwork and the presence of others. Being alone in this space is jarring, vulnerable.

Any additional musings are abruptly cut off as the muffled sound of voices begins to emanate through the door behind him.

“Have you told the Colonel yet, Lieutenant? I know you received the report.”

It’s Breda talking, hushed but urgent. Hawkeye’s voice is guarded when she answers.

“No. I haven’t gotten a chance to speak with him privately.”

Mustang’s throat tightens and he does not process their continued conversation. What are they referring to? What hasn’t she told him?

He moves forward to Hawkeye’s desk, scanning the items left there. He doesn’t immediately identify anything of particular note, merely several stacks of documents divided into neat sections of “completed” and “to do,” but then the blue glint of a folder tucked surreptitiously between them catches his eye and his stomach turns. She’s received something out of Central Command.

His fingers wrench the document free with dire resolve. Holding it up to the light, the silver lettering printed across the cover gleams coldly.

OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER  
CENTRAL COMMAND

REPORT OF POSTMORTEM EXAMINATION

CASE NAME:  
BRIGADIER GENERAL MAES HUGHES

The room around Mustang spins, and he shoves an arm forward to brace himself against Hawkeye’s desk as he slams the folder open on its surface.

The first pages are just endless text printed in a tiny and inscrutable font. He’s seen autopsy reports before, even written portions of them on some occasions, and he tears past these pages in search of something else.

After several moments he finds his quarry: in comparison to the previous sections this page is virtually free of text, occupied instead by a large outline of the human body. The figure is a stark white except for a single red mark scratched over the heart. The ink had bled at some point after penning, giving the image the sickening appearance of bleeding.

Mustang is transfixed by the sight for a long moment, nauseated, before his fingers turn the page over with a quaking motion. Three sets of text have been scrawled there by hand.

_MARKS AND WOUNDS:  
SINGLE POINT-BLANK GUNSHOT WOUND TO THE CHEST; PERFORATIONS OF RIGHT RIB 7, RIGHT LUNG, PERICARDIAL SAC, SUPERIOR VENA CAVA_

_CAUSE OF DEATH:  
UNKNOWN_

_MANNER OF DEATH:  
VIOLENT_

With weak effort, he bites back the bile that threatens to rise in his throat. He can feel his pulse throbbing down, down against his skull and suddenly his legs give out, ramming hard into the side of the desk as he collapses to his knees on the floor.

Dimly, he recognizes that Hawkeye has run into the room, calling his name.

\- - - - -

Hawkeye’s arm is stone around his shoulders as she all but carries him down the hall.

Mustang’s feet scuff absently along the floor, his eyes fixed somewhere miles in front of him. His grip is iron on the edge of her jacket. 

They find the bathroom mercifully empty; Hawkeye drags a nearby chair in front of the door, barring further intrusion as they enter. After a moment Mustang manages to push himself off of her in a mechanical fashion; his body caves heavily against the sink as he rests his hands on either side, bowing his head against the cold porcelain. 

She says nothing but leaves her hand solidly on his shoulder, steadying him.

He keeps his eyes closed for a long time, his erratic breath echoing off of the sink bowl. He tries desperately to slow the reeling of his mind but all he can think of is _perforation of the lungs- violent death- point blank-_

“Colonel.”

Hawkeye’s voice is gentle but firm, and it snaps him out of his head. He realizes that he is shaking under her grip. 

Slowly, he unclenches his jaw.

“Lieutenant… I- ”

The hand on his shoulder squeezes empathetically as the other is placed against the small of his back, and he hears her exhale.

“I’m so sorry, sir.”

They remain like this for several minutes. Eventually, Mustang manages to still himself. 

He lifts his head from the sink, staring into the mirror before him. 

He looks like absolute shit. His face has grown drawn and pale, and the skin at his hairline is slicked with sweat. The rims of his eyes are reddened, and his expression is guarded and feral.

There’s a small movement beside him as Hawkeye shifts her footing, and his gaze is drawn to her reflection. He hasn’t really looked at her, really looked at anything since Hughes; it’s been difficult enough just to keep himself together. Now he forces himself to study her.

Her uniform and hair are still immaculate, of course, they always are; it’s her face that gives him pause. Blue crescents have formed underneath her eyes, and her cheeks look thinner than before. Her lids are darker, lower, and the eyes themselves seem almost drained of color. 

She’s exhausted. The observation makes his chest clench like a vice.

He opens his mouth as if to say something, but she beats him to it; her voice is soft.

“You should go lie down somewhere. You’re in no condition to work.”

\- - - - -

Mustang is back in Ishval this time.

He’s huddled around a small fire at the Dahlia encampment, shivering as the sun’s rays disappear behind the dunes. He pulls his cloak a little tighter around himself.

“You alright, Roy?”

Mustang glances up, across the fire, and sees Hughes sitting opposite him. He looks as just as he did back in those days, round-faced and with a mop of messy black hair. His eyes are tired but friendly.

Seeing Mustang meet his gaze in silence, Hughes grins.

“Aw, come on. Don’t tell me you’re trying shoulder everything on your own again.”

Mustang sighs, weary.

“I don’t want to get anyone more tangled up in this hell than absolutely necessary.”

Hughes tilts his head and takes a swig from his canteen, considering.

“Yeah. But remember, you do have people you can rely on.”

He passes the canteen over, which Mustang receives. He tilts it up to his lips after a pause, the whiskey burning his tongue as he swirls it in his mouth.

 _I relied on you, Hughes,_ he thinks. _And look what it got you._

He chokes as the cocking of a revolver sounds from behind them, somewhere in the dark. His duck-and-cover response is instinctual.

“Hughes! Get- ”

The words aren’t even out of his mouth when a gunshot peals from the opposite direction. There is a strangled screech from the darkness, and then suddenly a young Hawkeye appears in the firelight. 

Her expression is frantic as her head whips around to face him, the barrel of her rifle smoking.

“Sir! Are you alright?”

_“Hawkeye?”_

But her eyes move to focus on something beyond him, wide with terror, and then his ears are deafened by a piercing scream and his vision is filled with an explosion.

He braces an arm against his forehead, squinting desperately into the conflagration of red and yellow as he searches for any sign of his friends, but they’ve vanished into the flames and the scene is gone.

_“Hawkeye! Hughes!”_

He’s alone once more. He falls to his knees, fingers digging helplessly into the sand as he cries their names.

\- - - - -

Mustang wakes up alone and terrified.

The room he’s in is dark, and he stumbles over several unseen obstacles as he lurches forward and rams into a wall. His hands scrabble frantically for a light switch. Locating one, he flicks it aggressively, wide eyes searching the room.

It appears as if he’s in a store-room of some kind, the space cramped and filled to the brim with dozens of shelves. The items he’d stumbled over in the darkness are books, fallen off the ends of their crowded cases.

There is no sand. There is no fire.

Rubbing his temples, Mustang attempts to recall what had transpired before he’d passed out. 

He remembers the bathroom with Hawkeye, his mind reeling from the autopsy report. She’d held him there, strong and steady, and pitied him. She’d told him he needed to rest.

That must be it, then. She’d brought him here to recover.

But where is she now?

Anxiety seeps back into his brain, and he feels his hands shake at his side. He _needs_ to lay eyes on her.

He dusts his jacket off with some force before wrenching the door open, barely restraining himself from sprinting down the hallway. 

It’s only a few minutes’ walk from the store-room to the office, but Mustang makes it in two. He shoulders open the door, head whipping around in search of Hawkeye. 

Instead he finds the office empty save for Fuery, who’d been tinkering mildly with his ham radio. As soon as Mustang enters the room he shoots up from his seat with a hurried salute.

“Colonel, sir!”

Mustang faces him with a distressed look, unable to keep his eyes from flicking about the room.

“Sergeant, where is the Lieutenant?”

Fuery spreads his hands somewhat weakly, gesturing to the door.

“She left about an hour ago, sir, and told me to wait here in case you came back before she did. She said she had something important to take care of.”

Fuery’s words, innocuous in any other situation, turn Mustang’s insides to ice. His voice is strained when he responds.

“Do you have any idea where she might’ve gone?”

Fuery looks positively frightened now.

“Um- not particularly, sir, but she seems to have taken a real interest in military history lately, so maybe that has something...?”

Mustang considers for a moment and then spins on his heel. Fuery questions him fruitlessly.

“Sir, do you think she’s- ”

He pushes back out the door, teeth grit.

 _“Stay here,_ Sergeant. That’s an order.”

\- - - - -

His brain has no idea where to begin, but his feet decide on Archives.

Mustang half-runs, half-stumbles through the halls, breath tight in his chest. Through the windows he can see that the sky has grown dim, the sun nearly set. The thought of Hawkeye caught alone in the darkness sends him reeling.

The Archives department is on the opposite side of Eastern Command from the office and the distance provides his mind with plenty of time to fray, untangling rapidly at the edges.

 _She’s fine,_ he tells himself weakly, _there’s nothing to worry about._ The more he says it the less he believes it.

After minutes, hours of torture, Mustang arrives at the department in question; the lights are dark, its personnel long since gone for the day.

His heart in his throat, he creeps through the Archives’ corridors. There’s no sign of her.

In his mind’s eye he sees Hawkeye in the phone booth, Hawkeye on the mortician’s slab. Hawkeye’s name on the autopsy report. The air catches harsh in his throat.

If Hughes was his head, Hawkeye is his heart. He knows he couldn’t bury her and survive.

He jabs an arm out to steady himself against the wall, staggering to a stop. His vision is spinning, his stomach frozen solid at the thought. He thinks he might be sick.

“Colonel?”

His world screams to a halt as she suddenly appears before him, rounding the darkened corner with an armful of books. 

Her gaze fixes on him, worry growing in her eyes, but before she can get a word out his hand flashes out to grip her arm like a vice just to prove she’s actually there. When he speaks his voice is hoarse and rasping.

“What are you _doing?”_

Hawkeye opens and closes her mouth at him a few times, caught off guard, but then quickly composes herself.

“Research, sir. I don’t like poking around with the attendants looking over my shoulder.”

Bizarrely, he is stricken with a sudden, insane urge to laugh. 

She’s so damn tenacious. It will be the death of her.

Hawkeye looks as if she’s waiting for some sort of response from him but he seems incapable of forming anything coherent, so instead he throws his free arm around her shoulders and pulls her into himself.

She stiffens like a rail against his body but he makes no move to release her, and so slowly, cautiously, she raises a hand to the curve of his spine and presses back.

His face is crushed into the epaulette of her jacket, her lieutenant’s stars imprinted in his cheek. A loose strand of hair at the nape of her neck ghosts across his forehead.

“I _cannot_ lose you, Lieutenant.”

Her heartbeat is rhythmic against his chest, reassuring him slowly and steadily that she is here, really here with him. The hand on his back runs up to his shoulder and her breath is warm against the shell of his ear as she speaks.

“Understood, sir.”

They stay like this for a long time, pressed together in the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> I am rewatching FMAB and could not resist the urge to hit Mustang while he's down.


End file.
